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Switzerland votes on world's highest minimum wage ($25/hr)

37 pointsby dan_bkabout 11 years ago

11 comments

lawlabout 11 years ago
Swiss here. I want to highlight two problems in the proposal:<p>&gt; <i>They argue that surviving on less than 4,000 francs a month is not possible because rents, health insurance and food are all prohibitively expensive.</i><p>There are multiple problems with that. The first beeing that you <i>can</i> survive on less than 4000 francs a month. A few of my friends are doing it, and they live <i>directly</i> in the city of Zürich where flats and food is most expensive. They aren&#x27;t living like kings, but they can afford a small appartment and a car. Seriously, that number is just too high. Okay, as a decent (senior) dev you&#x27;ll get 8000 per month, in Zürich. But as a dev, you&#x27;ll have a pretty good live in Switzerland in general, nevertheless, you can live on 3000 a month directly in Zürich if you can live with a one room flat. If you&#x27;re on minimum wage you&#x27;ll probably want to accept a 20 minute train ride and live a bit outside the city and get a larger flat.<p>The second problem: If you&#x27;re <i>outside</i> of Zürich&#x2F;Geneva&#x2F;$expensiveCity, with 4k&#x2F;month you can probably afford a 4-room flat and a decent car.<p>Seriously, the rent is the biggest issue here, you would have to set the minimim wage depending on where in Switzerland you live (i.e. minimum wage per canton, not for the whole country). If you&#x27;re on minimum wage you probably don&#x27;t have a huge selection of offers <i>where</i> you&#x27;re going to work, or the option to work remote, so you need work near your flat. So if you have to work in Zürich on minimum wage, that would be just plain unfair.<p>Having said that, I&#x27;m not against minimum wage, I just think the proposal is bullshit.
dan_bkabout 11 years ago
My personal thought on this topic:<p>When you work at least 8 hrs&#x2F;day, 5 days&#x2F;week (because somebody wants your product&#x2F;service), you should be able to have a normal&#x2F;decent life.<p>If not, you&#x27;re simply being ripped off.<p>EDIT: In other words, western societies have more than enough wealth for everybody to live really decent lives. If we still see horrible things like homelessness, etc., it&#x27;s because society accepts structures that result in this. And personally, I don&#x27;t want to be part of a society with such values.
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shirroabout 11 years ago
I believe in a fair living wage but high wages often just mean high cost of living. Unless your purchasing power improves it is kind of pointless. Australia&#x27;s minimum wage is double the USA but everything costs twice as much.
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wiseignorantabout 11 years ago
If they voted in favor, most Swiss would probably have to be considered morally inconsistent, because most of them will often cross the border with Italy, Germany or France just to have a nice meal at a restaurant (in Switzerland is already really expensive to the point of justifying the short trip). So in this case they would basically be saying that it&#x27;s not ok to be paid less then 22 francs, but they are more than happy using a service where people earn much less than that. &quot;But probably they will leave a huge tip for the staff in those countries&quot;. Well, I don&#x27;t think so. In other words, as always, &quot;it&#x27;s easy to love &#x27;humanity&#x27;, but too damn hard to love the individual next to you&quot;, isn&#x27;t it? Overall there is a lot of hypocrisy in those that support minimum wage, as a lot of them will say: &quot;everybody should have a &#x27;descent&#x27; wage&quot;, but then they are pretty happy buying cheap gadgets made by low paid Chinese people and using the remaining cash at their disposal for something else, maybe a nice trip for which they bought a low cost ticket, which is cheap also because the baggage handler doesn&#x27;t get paid 22 francs an hour, not even that poor Ryanair stewardess earns that much money. But I&#x27;m sure many supporters of minimum wage would be outraged if their London-Lisbon return ticket cost more than £100. For more than that they would expect at least the poor stewardess to blow them. Any top down attempt to build a &quot;just society&quot; makes no sense. What is &quot;just&quot;? Even if you can define that, given the complexity of our society, do you know what are the steps to be taken to achieve your perfect world? Are you God or something, knowing all the variables out there and how they interact? &quot;Yes, almost. I have Big Data, AI, super computers bla bla bla, and we live in a post scarcity society bla bla bla&quot;. If it&#x27;s like that I&#x27;m really sorry my Lord, you are right, my bad for ever doubting on your powers and kindness, please rule over me and my fellow humans. Anyway, some jobs would be pushed to the black market, leaving the poorer, that you initially intended to protect, with less protection and guarantees. And what about those that are low skilled, they won&#x27;t be able to gain access to the job market and to acquire the productivity and experience that could justify being paid 22 francs an hour one day.
arsabout 11 years ago
I kinda hope it passes - it&#x27;ll be a very interesting experiment.<p>A disaster for Switzerland of course, but someone has to do the experiment.<p>The best case scenario is a massive increase in cost of living, more likely is a huge increase in imports (since they are cheap now), together with a drop in exports (since no one can make anything affordable). That&#x27;s not a good position for any country.<p>But, maybe I&#x27;m wrong, that&#x27;s why I kinda hope they do the experiment.
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mkuhnabout 11 years ago
So, first trends indicate that it will be rejected with 70 percent no votes.<p>One reason that has been handed around to explain the no votes is that people do not want more regulation and think that this minimum wage would hurt more than it would help. Also: A large portion of people (90%+) already earn more than this minimum wage.<p>[Update 13:42 CET] It now looks like it is going to be rejected with 77% of the vote. Quite a statement.
Kenjiabout 11 years ago
The vote doesn&#x27;t make sense. If the Swiss people vote yes, the constitution will be updated with a law that the minimum wage per hour is 22 Swiss Francs. This is meaningless, considering that the constitution should be designed to hold for centuries. What are 22 Swiss francs in 100 years?
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Zarkonnenabout 11 years ago
Seeing this thread made me remember to vote - with half an hour to spare. Thanks HN!
marincountyabout 11 years ago
I don&#x27;t know about a $25.00&#x2F;hr wage, but one of the many brilliant things Switzerland does is ties fees&#x2F;fines to income. So, if you are a rich man and get a speeding ticket, it will pay substantially more. I think they tie fees&#x2F;fines to all aspects of working&#x2F;living in Switzerland? A poor person who gets a $800 speeding ticket could become homeless. A rich person getting a expensive ticket is like getting decaf at Starbucks. People, will counter saying oh the rich pay more in income taxes. Yes-- in many cases, but I still feel fines&#x2F;fees should be tied to a persons annual income. I feel it is so important it should be an admendment. I had a friend in college who dropped out after getting a $500 red light ticket. He wouldn&#x27;t admit the ticket played a part in him dropping out, but I think it was a factor. I will always remember how he felt when that ticket arrived in the mail, while just finishing top ramen. He was a poor kid from an ethnic family. He was maxed out on loans and grants, and just always on the edge. Oh well, I hope you are doing well Max.
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ojiiabout 11 years ago
For those interested in the results (and trends): <a href="http://www.wahlen.zh.ch/abstimmungen/2014_05_18/viewer.php?table=hochrechnung" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wahlen.zh.ch&#x2F;abstimmungen&#x2F;2014_05_18&#x2F;viewer.php?t...</a> (in German, but Google Translate does a decent job).<p>TLDR, it&#x27;s getting crushed, as expected.
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Dewieabout 11 years ago
This seems like a silly title. Switzerland is already an expensive country to live in, so the minimum wage has to be pretty high compared to other places.